Linux Gate #1 : How to speak Linux !

 

This article is the second article of our Linux series we call it the Linux Gates.

If you are not a Linux user YET! Well, you probably will be very soon if you use the content we provide in our page. We promise that by the end of each article you will see the benefit of Linux for your work or business or both.

Let's get into this article heart and chair! We want to share with you int this article a simple analogy concept that will help you learn Linux very quickly and to get used on using the terminal and the commands.

So let's get onto it right ahead :)

The terminal is the Linux black screen where you can write commands. those commands are understood and executed by your computer.

Linux language is called Bash and it's the language of the terminal. This language have rules and that is what we are going to talk about next.

If you didn't guess it yet, Linux is a language and not a set of commands and if you are welling to get started with Linux you need to learn the language rather than the grammar.

Let's take an example to introduce to the idea. A human language of course is more complex, but we will take the english language as example.

If someone wants to learn the English Language, he has two options :

Option 1 : is to take grammar courses, and to learn the logic of how to construct the phrases. using this method, one will end-up writing robotic phrases that an english man or woman would find off !

Option 2 : is to remember as many phrases as possible. This is the baby method in learning, and science shows that it's way more efficient method than the logical method in option 1.

With Bash it's exactly the same thing. Learning each command separately on the others is like learning words rather pre-made phrases or command-lines.

Let's take an example here :

ls command is a command that allows you to list the content of a directory :

That's all ! ls does only this one thing ... it's a very straight forward command as you can see. Now are you probably wondering : but how can use this dummy command in my work. sounds too simple to do anything at all !

Yes, You are probably right : "ls" on it's own can't do a lot for you without using other commands with it. The same for the word "morning" in the english language; it means nothing on it's own without the other words : "Good" and "to" "you".

The result is : "Good morning to you" which is way better than just going straight to a person a tell it "Morning" , without any context or complementary words.

Now this also true when it comes to the Linux commands. You need to combine commands in order to produce value.

But what can you use with "ls" command as word to be more useful ?

Well for starters, you can send the output of "ls" into a pipe and search for something : say for example a file name that is called "file1" :

The pipe is the link between the "ls" command and the "grep" command. grep is a command that looks from a word inside a file. The pipe can redirect the result of "ls" command as a file to the "grep" command.

The result is that : now you looked for the file number 1 and you indeed find it in your current working directory.

Let's add other words to our previous command. Now we want to send the output of our phrase/command to the file1 as follows :

You noticed that we have something interesting : the commands above find the file1 and write into it the phrase 'hi there, i'm file1'. So with only one line we have a command that write to each file it's name ... interesting !

This example is for demonstration purpose, but the point is that Linux is a language and you want to learn it as a language and not separate commands. Commands in and of themselves have necessarily an incomplete meaning.

This is the easiest way to learn Linux : is by gathering the most examples of how Linux is actually used in big companies and organizations throughout the globe as opposed to how it's supposed to be used.

Speaking of big companies that uses Linux, Our experience with Linux is based on working with international corporations that works with Linux in their day-to-day job and we are passionate about helping you reach that level if you want !

Alright, we hope that you get the idea we wanted to share with you.

In the next article, we are going to dive deep into the first concepts we believe you should learn when you want to take your Linux understanding to the next level.

See you next !

Regards